This dissertation explores how the literary construction of urban space is taking place in the New Weird fiction. The study analyses how, in six books by contemporary British author China Miéville, and whether literary space can be used for emancipation as a critique of capitalism, and if so, how.
The paper draws on the conceptual and terminological approaches of space studies, critical map theory and narratology to explore these six books.
It aims to establish a hermeneutic model in which literary
space functions as a political critique of capitalist state apparatuses and represented superstructures.
The thesis scrutinises the Bas-Lag trilogy (Perdido Street Station (2000); The Scar (2002); and Iron Council (2004)).
The City and The City (2009); Un Lun Dun (2007); and This Census-taker (2016). This approach links
narratology through its engagement with literary narratives and perspectives,
interpretation of the city, place/space, third space and cognitive mapping
cognitive space. The paper also considers the political aspects of spatial arrangement between the slum and the centre in the spatial representation of ideological state apparatuses.
Miéville uses the New Weird as a means of investigative arena for themes such as politics, ideology and the critique of capitalism. He utilises the framework of Marxism, in which he point out the recognition of the capacity of fantastic literature
to contaminate the real with the non-real and thereby reveal to the reader
the possibility of seeing the world differently, and of bringing the political aspects of urban life into the
for those without power. The dissertation interprets space within the framework of Michel Foucault,
Henri Lefebvre and Edward W. Soja. The thesis provides insights into the New
spatial arrangements of the New Weird, drawing on the context of spatial studies, critical map theory and narratology, and narrative theories and their political aspects
